Albuquerque Journal from Albuquerque, New Mexico • Page 16

BEST COPY AVAILABLE B6 Albuquerque Journal ENTERTAINMENT Tuesday, May 14, 1996 Old actors never die ey just go to CD-ROM -S 'V' "There are 165 pages and we added to that with question-and-answer periods. But it read like a terrific movie," she says. "The Pandora Directive" is due Aug. 1, for PC, no price set yet. William Shat- STEWART: Reprises "Star Trek" role ence to Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia, which is still one of the best for kids.

And Capt. Picard is also featured on Philips' "Titanic," an interactive exploration of the doomed ship and its adventurous re-discovery. The program includes more than two hours of narration and interviews with survivors of the disaster. For Windows and Mac, $39.99. Comedian Steve Allen, the Eagles' Joe Walsh and comedy impresario Budd Friedman join forces on "Don't Quit Your Day Job," a comedy game in which the player must navigate the 3-D nightclub interacting with show biz shamans in a goose-pimpling quest for a career.

The two-disc set (for kids 18 and older) also includes one hour of stand-up comedy. For Windows and Mac, $49.99. Speaking of comedy, you don't have to be alive to take part in the CD-ROM log jam. The Marx Brothers have been resurrected for "The material for the upcoming "Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail," a goofy assortment of puzzles, games, clues and medieval labyrinths due in June for $49.99. The PC version is due out first; Mac will follow in a few months.

Bruce Campbell of plays a mutant half-man in 7th Level's new "Cold Blooded," which requires players to arm a nuclear warhead, build a suit of armor and wander through a maze where you can't see yourself. Sounds existential. It will also be available in June at $39.99 for PCs, Windows 95 or 3.1. Kevin Kline, Demi Moore, Jason Alexander and Tom Hulce will voice the new "Disney's Animated StoryBook, the Hunchback of Notre Dame" due in September. Based on the animated movie coming in June, this story is the Victor Hugo classic, and the disc features some of the latest CD-ROM technology.

Mac and PC, voluted and challenging game. Here players try to solve the mystery to free those trapped in a perpetual hell. For Windows 95 and PC, $49.95. Penn Jillette, the noisy half of Penn and Teller, is one of the voices on the new "SkyTrip America" CD-ROM, a trek through American history, which also features voices by basketball star Chris Webber and Irene Bedard, the voice of Disney's "Pocahontas." Available at $39.95 for Windows and Mac. John Ratzenberger hosts Disney Interactive's new "Animated StoryBook, Toy Story," which leaps from the screen of the best selling movie and also features the voices of Don Rickles typecast as Mr.

Potato Head, Annie Potts as Bo-Peep and Jim Varney as Slinky Dog. For PC and Mac, $35. Those wacky Monty Pythoners, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Terry Jones, have converged again and recorded new Unknown Marx Brothers," two discs that follows the lives and careers of the comics. The discs include talks with family members and friends and a two-hour documentary. For Windows and Mac, $39.99.

Robin Williams (like he NEEDS the money) is featured on the "Jumanji" CD-ROM, which hustles arcade games and some key scenes from the movie. And the unsinkable Shari Lewis brings her puppetry to "Lamb Chop Loves Reading," a CD-ROM due for kiddies 3 to 6, with learning games, activities and several of Father Aesop's fables. Both for Windows and Mac, $39.99. Director Joe Napolitano Fences," "The nabbed the gig over at "Zork" headquarters. The latest in a popular series of "Zork" adventures (first conjured by a group of MIT students in the '80s) the new "Zork Nemesis" for Windows 95 offers 3-D surround graphics and sound as well as a con ner, Patrick Stewart and Malcolm McDowell reprise their roles for the "Star Trek Generations" CD-ROM, based on the movie.

Also on board the space ship are Jonathan Frakes (Riker), Brent Spiner (Data) and Michael Dorn (Worf.) The CD-ROM, due out this fall, is for Windows 95, no price set yet. Stewart is no newcomer to CD-ROMs. Last year he provided those dulcet tones and that cultured pres- By Luaine Lee fyiight-RidderTribune News Service Old actors never die. They just go to CD-ROMs. That may sound worse than it is.

With only 15 percent of the actors working in film or television at one time, there's always room for new horizons. The CD-ROM market seems to be pollinating faster than bees in an orange grove, and that's good news for actors. More and more of the "names" are jumping into the world of cyberspace for interactive games and stories and a little money on the side. The process pays about the same" as television, but the hours are shorter. Tanya Roberts Angels," has just finished portraying the mysterious woman in the murder-thriller, "The Pandora Directive," on which she worked less than 10 days.

"It's very different from working in film," she says. "First of all, you do a tremendous amount of work, very, very quickly. And there are three different paths to the game you can take, so that's three times the character work for certain scenes." Barry Corbin who shares the stage with Roberts on "Pandora," reports that all of the work is done in front of a blue screen. The camera is blind to the blue screen so that any kind of background can be added later. "There are several different paths you have to go," he says.

"So Lrl you always gotta keep that in your mind. You've got to play sort of neutral in the transition thing so it'll work if you go this way or that way," he says. Roberts says she found the script very similar to a feature film. 'Stepford Husbands' a lazy retread By David Biancum New York Daily News In 1975, Edgar J. Scherick produced a sci-fi movie called "The Stepford Wives," which cast Katharine Ross as a woman who moved to a suburban community where all the wives were replaced by identical, subservient robotic duplicates.

It was a modest, campy hit, partly because of William Goldman's witty adaptation of the Ira Levin novel, and partly because of the climactic scene in which Ross flashed her new biohic breasts. In 1980, Scherick had another idea, and produced a telemovie called "Revenge of the Stepford Wives." It starred Sharon Gless as a reporter checking out the same Stepford community and Don Johnson and Julie Kavner as an eventually happy couple. PREVIEW In 1987, inspiration struck Scherick yet again, and he produced another telemovie, "The Stepford Children." Barbara Eden starred as a woman alarmed by her new neighbors, disturbingly docile housewives and children. But now, just in time for the May sweeps of 1996, Scherick is striking out in a bold new direction. Tonight, he presents his newest telemovie production: "The Stepford Husbands" (8 p.m.

on KRQE-TV, Channel 13), starring Donna Mills as a woman whose moody husband, played by Michael Ontkean, is given the Stepford treatment. Where does Scherick get all his ideas? The original "Stepford Wives" was a fine genre entry, and came just as women's liberation was making major headlines and headway. Even then, though, I never could fathom Levin's basic premise that a group of men, armed with the technology to create docile and adoring women from scratch, would conspire to do away with, and replicate, their own wives. Wouldn't it make much more dramatic sense to build a Stepford Men's Club instead, and populate it with ready-made Marilyn Monroes, Marlene Dietrichs, Lillie Langtrys and Cleopatras? No matter. In "The Stepford Husbands," the miscreant spouses no longer are replaced by animatronic androids.

Now they're redone via shock therapy, heavy doses of mind-altering drugs, and all manner of mental torture. (Watching all the "Stepford" dramas in a single sitting certainly would qualify.) The script, by Ken and Jim Wheat, makes it laughably clear what sort of Real Men these brainwashings aim to eradicate. If you drink beer, bounce a basketball and watch sports on TV, you're a prime candidate for Louise Fletcher's sinister clinic. And getting Fletcher, who immortalized sinister clinic administrators in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," to play that role here is an indication of just how lazy this new "Stepford" story is. 1 rake Along Fares Are Easy: Buy a roundtrip ticket at our full unrestricted fare to a nonstop destination.

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